Sequential circuits samplers

>>OK...I now get these messages..so that means my disc drive is working. I 
was 
able to load some of the discs.I see the LEDS going crazy when I load it! 
Some discs gave me ERR messages. Does that mean its a bad disc?<<

bad sectors- the p2000/2002 will have a few goes at recovering this data so 
it's not fatal, but if it eventually finishes loading and the noises are 
alright, you'd be well advised to store them off onto a new disc.
the strobing led pattern is normal and meaningless; more alarming was the 
noise the older drives made when they encountered bad blocks. if it stops on 
"err", you might still be able to load the sounds one by one and repair the 
presets they live in. you need a manual.....

>>However...every 4rth note or so when playing the keyboard, I get a white 
noise sound instead of the sample playing. Any idea's what this is?<<

ah. that could be bad.  same keys each time? different keys with different 
sounds? if the dynamic allocation's on and the dead spot moves around.... 
you've got a duff voice chip. but if it's always the same place for a given 
disc-load, it could be that bad sector. the best way to test one of these 
things is with the manual......
(switch off the dynamic voice allocation- you'll know if it's on if you have 
the thing hooked up left and right and the notes are flying around. also, 
there's a menu item....)

>>To my understanding, there are internal sounds, then ones you load from 
disc. Is there a button I should push to get to the Internal sounds?<<

it's an option in the load-from-disc operation, and fills the sample memory 
with waveshapes from the cpu (not rom, strictly speaking- I'm fairly sure the 
machine makes them up from scratch). you'll see "int"....

>>Also: now that I am getting some sounds going, how do I set a recieve 
channel.( Q from original post) I understand the matrix Idea, but it seems 
to be in OMNI mode.Recieves on all channels. I would like to seperate it to 
use with my sequencer.Perhaps a command from the Options selection?<<

defaults to midi mode 1, which is omni receive. this setting stays with the 
disc/presets and can be changed using midi/modes from 0 (no midi rx/tx at 
all), 1 (omni), to 3a (normal mode 3), 3b (separate midi rx for left & right 
sides or "maps") and the long-forgot mode 4 (sample locations respond to ch 
1-16 respectively).  any of these followed by a + sign indicate the special 
overflow mode which sends notes out again (to another 2000/2) when it runs 
out of voices.
channel selection for modes 3 and 3a are in midi/channels. in 3a, the - sign 
is the left map's channel, while the + sign (appears when you press execute) 
signifies the right map's channel.

I used to use a lot of split presets like this, with the mono output and 
dynamic allocation on. 

I was really good at this a few years back- I have an expanded 2002 with 
separate outs and a 2000, though the latter has a duff kybd cobntroller. 
reading all this stuff makes me want to use them again. there was no better 
12-bit machine. akai's 900 won because they had the lcd display, but these 
filters are far better. stevie wonder used a 2000 for years- probably still 
does.
I'm looking through the manual- there is some sysex stuff but mostly about 
the sample dump format. it can be persuaded to up/download all the other 
settings too, but frankly the floppies were always going to be quicker. I 
changed the drives on both of mine for bog standard pc floppy drives without 
any problems, though the one in the 2000 has a cassette box glued to it to 
fill in the slot because the new drive's half the size.

duncan/rmi